The Canterbury Tales (Penguin Classics)

Rating:
Summary: It's *Chaucer*, For God's Sake!
Review: This is a wonderful, hilarious book! Granted, it is not an easy read, but if you are a good reader or don't mind working through the old language, you will find this to be a very funny book. It also takes some understanding of the period it was written in. Without that understanding and the aforementioned traits, you may find this book to be "a waste of time". Rent the movie A Knight's Tale to see appearances by Chaucer, the Summoner, and the Prior. This movie, despite being somewhat fluffy and anachronistic, does have some elements of The Canterbury Tales which, after reading the book, you may notice.

Rating:
Summary: A Classic!
Review: This is a wonderful, hilarious book! Granted, it is not an easy read, but if you are a good reader or don't mind working through the old language, you will find this to be a very funny book. It also takes some understanding of the period it was written in. Without that understanding and the aforementioned traits, you may find this book to be "a waste of time". Rent the movie A Knight's Tale to see appearances by Chaucer, the Summoner, and the Prior. This movie, despite being somewhat fluffy and anachronistic, does have some elements of The Canterbury Tales which, after reading the book, you may notice.

Rating:
Summary: Passable Version, but...
Review: While this is one of the better translations of The Tales I've seen, it's still unfortunately a translation. Even with a perfect translation, much of the rhyming and character of the original is lost. On the other hand, you can also lose much of the essence of the story by reading the Middle English text simply because the vocabulary can be so different (even though most of the time you can guess the meaning). Your best bet is to buy a copy of The Tales that keeps the original text but adds a line-by-line translation. The book may be twice as thick, but this way you can both read it the way Chaucer intended it to be, and read the translation right under the original words in case you're completely baffled by the vocabulary. I recently found a copy like that at a garage sale for 50 cents. It was the best 50 cents I've spent in a long time.